When it comes to your personal legacy, you shouldn’t be looking backward after a long career and wondering what yours is. Instead, you need to start building your legacy from day one.
Why?
Because it’s critical to your career success, says Richard Lane (BBA ’77), a retired senior executive from the insurance, reinsurance, and financial services industries.
Lane shared his career advice during a fireside chat with Vallabh “Samba” Sambamurthy, Albert O. Nicholas Dean of the Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and an audience of Wisconsin MBA students, faculty, staff, and alumni as part of the M. Keith Weikel MBA Leadership Speaker Series held at the school.
Lane says to create your legacy, you need to determine who you want to be and what you want from your career—and the answers to those questions determine how you build your skillset.
One way is through dimensional learning, which is more than mastering disciplines. It’s taking on opportunities that “are not always rosy” and are outside your comfort zone. It’s about trial and error. It’s learning how you lead and influence people.
“Dimensional learning creates job opportunities you can’t even imagine. You’re preparing all the time by adding layers of competency, layers of knowledge, and layers of resiliency,” Lane says.
In Lane’s 40-year career, he prioritized learning as much as possible from as many people as possible.
“I didn’t set out to be managing partner of the firm or the CEO of the firm. I didn’t set out to move through different ranks, officer titles, this title, that title. I did all that, but the way I did it is that I sought out ways of learning new things all the time,” Lane says.
Part of this learning process is also gaining knowledge from disciplines other than business. Lane calls it a “secret life,” where you find ways to balance the stresses of everyday work while becoming more innovative and drawing inspiration from other sources.
Another important part of creating your legacy, and it is something Lane places a big emphasis on, is mentorship. No matter where you’re at in your career, mentors are invaluable.
“There are a number of things you must do to have a fantastic career but embracing and seeking mentors is the most impactful,” he says.
Lane says when you’re interviewing for a job, forget about the name of the company. Ask who your mentors are. If they don’t tell you or don’t measure the effectiveness of their mentors, tell them you want to pick yours.
“Sounds kind of bold, but the point is that mentors do a number of things for you, including accelerating your career. Not everybody is an effective mentor. The key is to find an effective one.”
And how do you know if you chose an effective mentor? The mentor becomes the mentee, Lane says. It’s a symbiotic relationship.
“If you talk to somebody who’s a prospective mentor and you ask them the question, ‘Can I teach you something?’ and they say, ‘You can’t teach me anything,’ check them off the list.”
So what is Lane’s legacy? Mentorship.
“I just think it’s one of the most fulfilling things you can ever do in your business career,” Lane says.